The well-traveled garden

Sunday

Apr 27, 2014 at 6:00 AM

In the early 1900s, David Fairchild, a botanist and plant explorer for the United States Department of Agriculture, visited the tropical regions of the world in search of plants that could be of economic value to farmers in the U. S.

During 23 years of travel, he introduced and established more than 200,000 plants, including varieties of rice, cotton, wheat, soybeans and dates, to a botanical garden in southern Florida for testing and trial. To further publicize the merits of these plants, he wrote several books, including "The World Grows Round My Door" and "The World Was My Garden."

Whether our focus in gardening is vegetables or flowers, the plants found in our yards often are native to widely diverse geophysical regions of the world. For example, the area from Asia Minor to Egypt (eastern end of the Mediterranean) is believed to be where asparagus, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, endive, kale, lettuce, parsley, parsnips and rhubarb originated. Think India when you grow peas, Indian mustard, eggplants, cucumbers and cowpeas. Thank China for soybeans and radishes.

Corn came to us from Peru by way of Guatemala. Sweet corn is a recent hybrid form. Both types traveled from the Andes in Peru through Central America to southwestern U. S. and finally now spans the world.

Both the common and lima beans are believed to have come from northwest South America (Lima, Peru), and the common beans share Brazil and Guatemala as points of origin. The common potato shares Peru, Ecuador and Chile as the region where the Incas valued its easy growth and storage. The sweet potato (not related to the "Irish" potato) is a heat-loving member of the Morning Glory family and was found growing in the West Indies by Columbus. Look to Honduras and the Yucatan for red, purple or white types.

We owe Mexico and Central America for a thousand different tomato types, and let us not forget dahlias and marigolds that they shared with gardeners. Dahlias were first a food crop and later grown for their flowers.

Thank Columbus for introducing peppers (mostly hot peppers) from the Caribbean. Impatiens were found growing throughout the Islands in great profusion. Note that the New Guinea Impatiens now widely grown and resistant to impatiens Downey mildew were discovered within the last century in Java.

Broccoli and cauliflower are two forms of the same plant, the parent plant being a cabbage from Asia Minor. Kohlrabi is a cabbage-turnip type vegetable with "a cabbage on the top and a turnip below" and together with Brussels sprouts was developed in northern Europe.

Watermelons came from central Africa, while okra originated in Ethiopia. Look for wild lettuce and muskmelon in Iran. Onions from Egypt, carrots out of either the Far East or Asia Minor, peas from Afghanistan.

So grows your worldly garden. Do you find it humbling that your vegetables and flowers have traveled more than yourself?